Chapter Seven Community Police Patrols and Vigilantism* Gary T
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Chapter Seven Community Police Patrols and Vigilantism* Gary T. Marx and Dane Archer In their introductory chapter, H. Jon Rosenbaum and Peter C. Sederberg define vigilantes as those who identify with the established order, yet in defending it resort to means in violation of traditional boundaries. They suggest a typology of vigilantism according to whether its purpose is primarily crime-control, social-group-control, or regime-control and whether participants are private or public persons. A group may, of course, have more than one purpose and this may change over time. This essay focuses on American private groups primarily concerned with crime-control, particularly those who see themselves as victims of crime and/ or are critical of the response of authorities to crime. Americans have responded to recent law-enforcement problems with increased fear, estrangement from neighbors, avoidance behavior, increased receptivity to law-and-order politics, and, as the rising fortunes of the private security industry suggest, increased purchases of protective devices such as better locks, alarms, and weapons. The above are primarily passive, defensive, indirect, and individual responses.1 Other more active, aggressive, direct group responses may also be seen. American society has always placed a heavy emphasis on voluntary *We are grateful to the Urban Institute and the National Institute for Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice for support. The original version of this article first appeared as “Citizen Involvement in the Law Enforcement Process: The Case of Community Police Patrols,” by Gary T. Marx and Dane Archer in American Behavioral Scientist 15, no. 1 (Sept./Oct. 1971): 2-72 published by Sage Publications, Inc. 1 For data on individual responses, F. Furstenberg, “Fear of Crime and Its Effect on Citizen Behavior,” (Paper prepared for Symposium on Studies of Public Experience, Knowledge and Opinion of Crime and Justice, Bureau of Social Science Research, Washington, D.C., 1972), and J. Conklin, The Impact of Crime (New York, Macmillan, 1975). In H. Jon Rosenbaum and Peter C. Sederberg (eds), Vigilante Politics. Univ. of Penn. Press, 1976 130 Gary T. Marx and Dane Archer Community Police Patrols 131 action and masculinity. It should not be surprising that the country’s populist, into their own hands, a recent account lists no fewer than 326 vigilante self-help ethos should have spawned a large number of citizen policing groups movements during the past two centuries of American history.2 such as the Louisiana Deacons, Anthony Imperiale’s North Ward Citizens’ R. M. Brown distinguishes two types of vigilantism in America. The first Committee, the Watts Community Alert Patrol, and the Jewish Defense League. appeared prior to 1856 in areas where settlement preceded effective law enforcement. The concerns of this type of vigilantism were primarily horse It is with these groups (“self-defense patrols,” “vigilantes,” “peace creeps,” thieves, counterfeiters, outlaws, and “bad men”—the enforcement, that is, of “security patrols,” or “community patrols,” depending on the group in consensually formulated standards of peace and law. question and the political perspective of the observer) that this paper is The emergence of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee in 1856 was the concerned. It focuses on an organizational response of victims (or at least birth of a second form of citizen mobilization, what Brown calls those who see themselves and their communities as potential victims). “neovigilantism.” Unlike the earlier type, neo-vigilantism “found its chief Perceived victimization is expanded to include actions of authorities as well as victims among Catholics, Jews, immigrants, Negroes, laboring men and labor actions of those engaged in traditional crime and disorder. leaders, political radicals, and proponents of civil liberties.”3 Relatively little is known about contemporary American patrol groups While the first type of vigilantism filled or attempted to fill a discernible beyond an occasional journalistic account. There are few answers for such void, the second generally emerged where the regular police and legal systems important questions as: In what contexts do patrol groups emerge? What are were already functioning, but where alien groups were seen to threaten the their natural histories of development? How widespread and enduring are established order. Rather than simply enforcing the law, the second type such groups and what are the main types? What are their purposes and frequently involved political struggles for power, racism, attempts to terrorize practices? What is the nature of their interaction with police, various levels of would-be criminals, and even the desire to spare the public the cost of the government, other ethnic groups, and their own presumed constituency? How conventional judicial process. are they viewed by these various groups? How are they organized? How are Recent self-defense groups differ from more classic vigilante groups in that members recruited and to what extent are they screened and trained? What they, for the most part, have not killed or taken the law into their own hands. characteristics and attitudes do members have, and what factors are involved Instead, their primary functions have been the surveillance and protection of in their motivation to participate? What theory of police failure do they hold? their own communities, often as an ancillary group to regular police. Thus, How does the public view them? What are their consequences for the they more closely resemble the early anti-horsethief societies which amplified reduction of crime and civil disorders, feelings of safety, curtailing police law enforcement through pursuit and capture, but did not try to substitute for abuses, or increasing intra- and intergroup conflict in a community; e.g., it by administering summary punishments. Recent groups have performed within or between ethnic groups or with the police? What are their largely deterrent functions and have not usually held street trials or meted out implications for law enforcement and public policy? This paper makes a alley justice. But the fact that private citizens have chosen to involve preliminary elfort to deal with questions such as the above. themselves in police work has meant that the issue, if not often the substance, of vigilantism has reoccurred with them. COMMUNITY POLICE PATROLS One of the most important of contemporary self-defense groups, at least in the last twenty years, has probably been the “self-defense guard” which When public institutions fail to meet felt needs, a number of recurring organized in Monroe, North Carolina in 1956. The group’s purpose was to responses on the part of the communities presumably being serviced may be protect its members against the harassment and incursive violence of the Ku observed. These vary, perhaps in decreasing order of frequency, from passive Klux Klan, long a citizen patrol group of a very different nature. The Monroe resignation or withdrawal, to reformist and radical politics, to efforts to set up group, led by Robert Williams, attracted sixty members and received a charter wholly new institutions outside the traditional system. from the National Rifle Association. Citizen involvement in law enforcement is not new to the American scene. The next widely publicized self-defense group patrolled the Crown Heights In earlier periods of American history when people felt that there was too area of Brooklyn between 1964 and 1966. The group called itself the much crime, that their persons or property were in danger, that cherished “Maccabees,” after a Jewish resistance group which fought to curb Syrian traditions and values were being threatened, and that regular law- enforcement officials were not coping with the problem, vigilante-type efforts 2. R. M. Brown, “The American Vigilante Tradition,” in H. D. Graham and T. R, Gurr, eds.. The History of Violence in America (New York; Praeger, 1969), p. 154. frequently emerged. Counting only those groups which have taken the law 3. Ibid., p. 197. 132 Gary T. Marx and Dane Archer Community Police Patrols 133 domination in the second and first centuries BC. Led by Rabbi Samuel A. Some Descriptive Data on Twenty-Eight Groups Schrage, the Maccabees of the 1960s numbered 250 volunteer members and Race of Members. Of the twenty-eight self-defense groups, seventeen (61 used radio-car patrols to report crime and deter potential criminals. percent) were black. Since the performance of conventional police is probably In 1965, a year after the Maccabees organized, a black self-defense group least adequate and most controversial in black neighborhoods, the dispro known as the Deacons gained prominence in Bogalusa and Jonesboro, portionate emergence of alternate institutions there should not be surprising. Louisiana. The Deacons fielded armed patrol cars to protect civil rights Operations. The functions performed by the groups varied. The most workers and blacks from Klansmen, white rowdies, and the police. Led by common function, characterizing more than four out of ten, involved patrols Charles Sims, the Deacons claimed seven thousand members in Louisiana of their neighborhoods; 39 percent worked to “cool” existing or imminent civil and sixty loosely federated chapters in Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and the disorders; 32 percent kept their communities under surveillance and were Carolinas.4 A useful case study of a group like the Deacons is given by Harold “eyes and ears” for the police;